fairness

Here is an interesting Supreme Court of the United States opinion on a statutory requirement to give reasons: T-Mobile South, LLC v. City of Roswell, 574 U.S. ___ (2015). T-Mobile wanted to build a cell-phone tower in Roswell. The City refused to give permission: the elected members of the Council adopted a motion to deny […] Read more

The English courts have in recent decades recognized a common law duty to consult as an aspect of the duty of fairness. It was the subject of a comprehensive treatment by the Supreme Court in R. (Moseley) v. London Borough of Haringey, [2014] UKSC 56, though it is not clear whether Lord Wilson’s more expansive […] Read more

Should courts defer to administrative decision-makers on procedural matters? As things stand (for the most part), judicial intervention is warranted whenever a decision-maker fails to live up to judicially developed conceptions of fairness. But this judicial supremacy sits uneasily with the modern, context-sensitive duty of fairness. Historically, automatic intervention whenever a decision-maker deviated from the […] Read more

One of the panels at the inaugural Public Law Conference last week (see my previous post) was on legitimate expectations. I was keenly interested, as I have agreed to contribute a chapter to a forthcoming (early 2016) collection on legitimate expectations in the common law world. Cora Hoexter was sympathetic to legitimate expectations as she […] Read more

The recent UK Supreme Court decision in Osborn v. The Parole Board, [2013] UKSC 61 has already provoked interesting commentary on the relationship between the common law of procedural fairness and the European Convention on Human Rights. I have nothing to add to that commentary, but one of the things I find interesting about Osborn […] Read more

These days, we are all very aware of the importance of metadata. Administrative decision-makers should be too: a failure to be fully aware of the implications of metadata nearly did for the respondent in Demaria v Law Society of Saskatchewan, 2013 SKQB 178.The applicant challenged, on numerous grounds, the Law Society’s refusal to admit him […] Read more

A funny thing happened at the Tribunal Administratif du Québec recently. A hearing was conducted into the suspension of an individual’s driver’s licence by videoconference. One of the administrative judges was present at the hearing; the other joined from a remote location. When the SAAQ — the administrative agency that controls drivers’ licences — sought […] Read more

Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency won a High Court legal battle against Treasury Holdings earlier this week, but it may end up losing the war. Finlay Geoghegan J.’s judgment, [2012] IEHC 297, cannot have been well received at NAMA headquarters. Over at NAMA Wine Lake, the editors wonder out loud “if indeed the Agency is […] Read more

A basic principle of administrative law is that a decision-maker must approach its decisions with an open mind. Demonstrating that a decision-maker had a “closed mind”, however, is extremely difficult. A decision-maker bent on refusing an application come what may will, if clever enough, keep his or her prejudices to him or herself.Interestingly, the applicant […] Read more

Another example from the Canadian courts of the thin line separating process from substance: Turner v. Canada (Attorney General), 2012 FCA 159. On this occasion, the determination that a question went to process is again plausible at first sight but troubling on closer inspection. The applicant here alleged that he was discriminated against by the […] Read more